New Rules

I need to get something off my chest. It's fairly important, but it's real simple:

Stop talking about whack shit.

I don't care if it's whack music, or bad movies, or crappy television shows. Whatever it is, just let it go.

I know, it's in our nature as human beings to complain about what we don't like. For someone like me, who loves music so much I don't even like to be talked to when I'm listening to certain songs, it's especially difficult to hear so much BS coming out of people's sound systems and not comment, but we have to let it go.

People have said it for years: All publicity is good publicity. When you talk shit about the latest crappy artist, or a movie that's terrible but really popular, people are alerted of it's existence. Worse yet? You invite supporters of it (and there are always supporters) to come in and defend it, which eventually causes the argument to digress to the point that no one's really listening.

When you look at it like that, you realize it's just better to ignore whack shit altogether. Just pretend it doesn't exist. Of course, that rule by itself just means whack shit's going out unattacked, so it can spread even faster. This brings me to Rule 2:

Promote Good Work

This has been Jumping in Headfirst's mission statement from day one. It wasn't until recently that I realized it, but this is why I don't review: there's no point.

Reviews were borne out of a need to give others an idea of the quality of a work, from novels to music to movies (and other forms of entertainment). As professional reviewers came into being, and it went from "labor of love" to "paid occupation", it allowed groups of people to experience various things for free that other people would have to pay for, alerting whoever read their work to what was worth spending one's money on.

But there's no need for that any longer. The sheer amount of work that is released that is of good quality is so plentiful these days, that you can keep people busy forever pointing them to quality work, whether it be music, video games, anime, or whatever. Unless all you have to do is sit around and do nothing, trust me you won't get through it all.

So what I'm suggesting? Is that we drown it out. I'm challenging all of my friends--everyone that reads this blog--to just drown out the garbage. Ignore it, and point people towards the awesome-ness. Dwelling on what's good, and ignoring what's terrible, you'll find yourself a lot happier, too. Try it, just for a week.